Morsi’s Democracy In Egypt

A video Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi released three years ago on the Muslim Brotherhood’s YouTube channel is causing him trouble now. In the clip, he exhorts the faithful, warning against backsliding:

“We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews,” Mr. Morsi declared. Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue,” he said. “The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.”

Hating Jews forever as a way of worshiping God. Lord, have mercy, but this guy who now runs Egypt is a sick, disgusting character. But wait, there’s more:

“These bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs,” Mr. Morsi declared, using a slur for Jews that is familiar across the Muslim world.

Can’t imagine why the Israelis worry about their future with Egypt, or why the Israeli far right, some of whom hold the same repulsive views of Palestinians, is on the rise.

Morsi is an incredibly despicable person. The sort of person that begs to have an exhaustive post to keep track all the vile things he’s said and done. A 9/11 truther who betrayed his own profession (an academic in materials science, paid for by the generous California!) to engage in bigotry, who married his cousin, regards the ancient Christian communities of Egypt as interlopers deserving of special government treatment, who forced through a constitution at the moment when his faction was nearly the only left at the constitutional negotiations (and which passed, with a mere 8 million of Egypts 90+ million population voting ‘yes’), who both regards Israel as an enemy and yet maintains the evil Gaza blockade (with whom Egypt shares a border), and on and on and on.

If any good comes from the Revolution, it will begin by replacing Morsi with someone less disgusting.

I notice that it is ok to worry about the bottomless well of hatred many in the Islamic world draw upon for Jews, but our curiosity always seems to stop there.

I have substituted a more acceptable slur, so we can not be so all fired up and distracted by mean names, and instead focus on the content of the speech. Now let us look again at a portion of the quote you excerpted:
“These [Silly Rabbits] who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers…”

So, really, what the Egyptian agitator-now-president is upset about here, (mean mean meany old mean words aside), is the treatment of the Palestinians.

Could we, instead of parsing every mean word uttered by a Muslim, ask ourselves what our F-16 and M-16’s are enabling Israel to do to their neighbors? Could we ask ourselves if we would like to live in an open air prison camp (Gaza)? Can we ask ourselves what rhetoric we would use if a foreign power treated American Evangelicals the way that the government of Israel treats Palestinians? Can we ask ourselves what rhetoric we would use if an official of a foreign government, let’s say Belgium, announced a policy of occupying Maine and then deliberately keeping the residents of Augusta on near-starvation diets while periodically ordering airstrikes against them?

Sure, the guy’s rhetoric is disgusting. Let’s by all means focus on that and not:

– the embargo against Palestine

– settlement building in Palestinian territory

– targeted assassination of Palestinians

– the deaths of women and children in those assassinations

– the persecution of Palestinian Christians (who don’t count as Christians because they are not white and won’t bring about some corn-fed heretic’s action movie end of the world fantasy by building a second temple, so screw ’em)

– the fact that the American taxpayers pay for all this and that it is done with American weapons

If, and I hold forth this possibility with great trepidation, knowing how radical and crazy it sounds – If the Palestinians are actually human, (only if), do you think people in the Middle East might have something to be a little pissed off about? And do you think they might, in the absence of F-16’s, M-16’s, and armored bulldozers, strike back with some bigoted words?

Aren’t there a lot of people in the world who live by credos that amount to hating someone or another as a means or a part of worshipping God?

Clearly the language spoken my Morsi is different and more exciting, but is it really any different that the “perfidious Jews” comment that used to be a part of every Catholic Mass? Different in emphasis maybe, different in kind? Well, the Holocaust did occur in what was formerly known as Christendom, so you have a bit of a hill to climb before convincing me that it’s different in kind.

That said, Morsi is clearly one of the worser sorts of humans and those who stand for justice and rightness best be vigilant and watchful. But then, what else is new?

[Note from Rod: To the extent that anti-Semitism was accepted and promoted by Christians — and to the extent that it still is (we have this problem in some parts of the Orthodox Church) — it is a sin and a blight on our collective conscience. To promote the hatred of any people is wrong, especially promoting it as a form of worship of God. That’s blasphemous. I really think the Muslim Brotherhood is a horrible, horrible organization. — RD]

It’s very hard to distance oneself from such comments made and celebrated only three years prior. How sad that the choices for Middle Eastern leaders are so often brutal dictators whom the US (and Israel) can live with, or populists like Morsi who are much harder for us to live with, but who are admired in those nations for their hate-mongering.

“abandon a stalwart ally” – this makes it sounds like the former Egyptian president was swinging away in the battlefield while we perfidiously withdrew our forces – not quite.

If you mean, “stopped funding, at the cost of a bizzillion dollars a year, a sock puppet dictator who ruled on the basis of a thirty-year-old emergency decree and whose secret police elicited cooperation by the charming tactics of rape and torture” that would be a little more accurate. But to be fair to Hillary, she tried to get the head of the secret police to replace the ousted president before finally allowing that it might be ok for the almost-human-enough-to-be-allowed-to-vote Egyptians the right to cast their first honest ballots since, well, ever. Sure Morsi’s evil – he’s a politician – but at least he’s the sociopath they chose instead of the sociopath we chose…

Unsurprising yet still despicable. I don’t expect much of A-rab democracy though. They’ll always rabble rouse. But the ‘important’ thing is to work on economic development and don’t try to stay in office longer than your term dictates. That’s all I expect/hope from Morsi.

It’s amazing how little the people in the UAE fixate on anti-Semitism (or political freedom). Sure they may agree with it as well but they’re too busy working, building, doing commerce. Take away the jobs, the livelihood, the sense of accomplishment from doing work and they’ll get bored and inevitably need excuses and pariahs.

We have one or two choices: we continue to prop up horrible dictators by giving them money and weapons (and Mubarak was hardly the worst) and use them to keep the fundamentalists down or we promote democracy.

If we do the former, we have to stop pretending like we’re some force for good in the world; if we do the latter, we have to realize that oftentimes the people our former propped-up dictators oppressed are going to be the most politically active of the nation. From what I know of him, Morsi’s a god-awful ass, but he’s also giving expression to sentiments that percolated and grew under Mubarak’s regime.

I’m betting that in her more candid moments, Michele Bachmann probably says similar things about Muslims. Now imagine if our fundamentalists were actually oppressed (i.e., put in jail, assassinated, tortured, etc) what she’d say.

I’d also be interested to know the words they are translating as ‘hatred’ and ‘worship’. Perhaps this man needs no help to sound any worse than he does, but I have also seen things in translation rendered creatively by people who like to inflame troubles and discord.

In order to score points in the culture war people tend to label many things as hateful and bigoted that are actually just disagreements. Thus, when we see genuine hatred expressed, even in other cultures, it is sort of a shock to the system (not that we should really be surprised in the specific context of this example).

“Can’t imagine why the Israelis worry about their future with Egypt, or why the Israeli far right, some of whom hold the same repulsive views of Palestinians, is on the rise.”

Rod, if you know of a public statement by a prominent Israeli figure (not some fringe extremist) talking about the Palestinians in a manner similar to the way Morsi talks about the Jews and Israel, you ought to bring it to our attention. If not, your attempt at moral equivalence between Israel and Morsi would appear to be an attempt to avoid being denounced as by the knee-jerk Israel-bashers at this site.

[Note from Rod: Avigdor Lieberman, recently resigned Israeli foreign minister. Look him up. But there’s a good piece in the current New Yorker about how the Lieberman bloc is rising in Israeli politics, and are becoming the mainstream, in part because the secular left is exhausted, and has no faith in the Palestinians or peace-making with them. — RD]

[Note from Rod: To the extent that anti-Semitism was accepted and promoted by Christians — and to the extent that it still is (we have this problem in some parts of the Orthodox Church) — it is a sin and a blight on our collective conscience. To promote the hatred of any people is wrong, especially promoting it as a form of worship of God. That’s blasphemous. I really think the Muslim Brotherhood is a horrible, horrible organization. — RD]

Something about what you said there Rod is, not sure if this is the right word, ironic to me. Does God really care if it’s blaphemous? As well, blasphemous to who? Shouldn’t an Imam or muslim scholar chime in on that rather than an Orthodox Christian (hope I pegged you in the right hole, my apologies if I haven’t).

The notion of collective conscience, which I kind of share, doesn’t really work out in practice. Unfortunate, but I’m pretty sure the history back me up on it being true.

If I saw the world differently, I would be with you in your disgust for this all too human failure. As it stands, I try not to have my feathers too ruffled by the abuses, evils and failings of humans. I just try to make sure that me and mine don’t get steamrolled, roughed up or otherwise undone by the evils of humankind. I also regularly give thanks for living in one of the better, safer and saner parts of the world. Pure dumd assed luck that I live here and not there.

I agree with everything you say here, but it is no different than the bigotrous, lazy caricaturization of Palestinians as subhuman animals living in an unclaimed land by the early settlers of Israel in the earlier part of the 20th century. That doesn’t make it right, but it is just as lazy to act like this is unique to such Muslim leaders to Morsi, when you have both secular and religious leaders in Israel spouting the exact same kind of vitriol. As do you have Christian leaders in the States doing the same thing.

This is a despicable but common attribute among humans of all creeds. Please, don’t peg it on one in particular without acknowledging that.

Notice that he does not merely demand hatred of Zionists, but he also calls for hatred “of Jews.”. Presumably in Morsi’s mind Jews are to be hated in and of themselves, apart from whatever they believe about Israel and the Palestinians.

Let’s pause now to remember what a beautiful and inspiring thing ’twas that glorious, peace-giving Arab Spring.

Maybe the founders of Israel should have thought a bit longer and harder about that whole Promised Land thing. Setting up your country in that particular neighborhood is a bit like moving into the slums of Baton Rouge and expecting everything to be OK.

“Clearly the language spoken by Morsi is different and more exciting, but is it really any different that the “perfidious Jews” comment that used to be a part of every Catholic Mass?”

Well, actually: yes, it is different.

The first problem is that the Latin word “perfidis” doesn’t really translate to the English “perfidious” – even though it is true that English missals often translated it this way. (Then again, “perfidious” has not always had quite the same meaning in English, either.)

The second problem is that the Good Friday Prayer (as it existed up until 1960, when “perfidis” was removed, as well as after) is, fundamentally, a prayer that the Jews be saved. Now, this may be a salvation that the Jews do not believe in or want, and the expression of which they may find distasteful, especially in the context of anti-semitic behavior of Catholics down through the ages. But it is at least, on its own terms, an expression of charity for the Jews.

One can’t say the same thing about these comments by Morsi and his like-minded allies.

Maybe the founders of Israel should have thought a bit longer and harder about that whole Promised Land thing. Setting up your country in that particular neighborhood is a bit like moving into the slums of Baton Rouge and expecting everything to be OK.